Corrupted Files

Last week I was not able to get onto my computer. I kept getting an error message-HD-521-2w and HD 535-2w. I researched the internet and found out it was corrupted files. A friend said we needed to reinstall XP. He brought over his "bootable" xp disc and reinstalled. Now we have a problem. He says it wiped out our hard drive and we have lost all files. We also can't access the internet and our ISP says it is because we have no drivers either. We put some drivers on a flash drive from our other (older) computer and it did not recognize it on our current one. Again did research and it said we needed Service Pack 2. Burned it onto a disc and tried to download it and the disc drive was recognized but we got an error message saying the key code was invalid and the install would be stopped. Is the only alternative we have to now purchase a factory sealed XP OS (with SP2) and reinstall it. We can't afford a new system right now and need help. Our friend also put in another hard drive (Western Digital EIDE 320GB Hard Drive) alongside our other drive that came with the system ( 250GB) and now it only recognizes 127 GB on each drive. We should have 570GB total. What is going on? Thank you in advance from anyone who can advise us.FYI-We don't have the star up disc since we bought a display model with XP already installed.

First of all. If you have overwritten the old WinXP installation then the chances of recovering person files is slim. Sorry to say your friend may have meant well but didn't do the right thing.

Have you given up on recovery? If not, then you need to stop installing stuff.

From MY Googling I found that error may indicate a failing hard drive.

HP seems to have a hardware diagnostic that can be reached by hitting F10 at start up. I suggest you start there to see if you have a hardware issue.

If you just want to get it running again I believe the same F10 will give you an option to restore to factory state. That should install everything that originally came with the HP.

The reason you are showing only 127GB is because your friend's WinXP CD is the original version, which is NOT 48 bit LBA compliant. That means it can't handle partitions/drives larger than 127GB. That is not a hardware problem if the hard drive now installed in the HP is the same one that came from the factory.

We did F10 and it would not work. I researched the error #'s and it seems that it is a problem with corrupted files in XP. Not trying to refute what you are saying but also talked to Geek Squad and they agreed it was XP corruption. Told me to bring it in and they would fix it-at an astronomical price.

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